Robert Ramsay Cellarswas founded by winemaker Bob Harris and Lauren Vogut. The winery, located in the Woodinville Warehouse District, is named after Harris’ great uncle Mason Ramsay.

Harris had a bottle of Côte-Rôtie at an impressionable age. “I claim twenty-one when I talk about it in public,” Harris says with a chuckle. “That bottle of wine put wine on the map for me.”

Harris started out making beer in college, then moved on to hard cider. “Wine was just kind of naturally the next step,” he says.

In terms of starting a commercial winery Harris, who works in AT&T’s software group says, “You can’t make wine as a hobbyist. It just doesn’t work. You go to buy grapes and people ask how many tons you want.”

Harris started Robert Ramsay Cellars in 2005. Prior to this he was winemaker at Coeur d’Alene Cellars. Harris credits Nicolas Quille of Pacific Rim, Ron Coleman at Tamarack Cellars, Chuck Reininger of Reininger Winery, and Kristina Mielke-van Löben Sels at Arbor Crest for helping him get started. “I have no training other than those people who helped me,” Harris says. “Other than that it’s all hedonism.”

Harris sources fruit from Boushey, Phinney Hill, McKinley, and Upland. “I love the relationship part with the farmers. That’s part of the fun.” In terms of philosophy, he focuses on making hedonistic wines. Harris also tries to be non-interventionist. “I try to make every adjustment I’m going to make to a wine on the crushpad,” he says.

The two wines below, the 2009 Bravo Rosso Red Wine and 2010 Barbera Rose, are the first releases from Wind Rose Cellars.

Winemaker David Volmut was exposed to wine at a young age. “I am 50% Italian, so we were raised with wine at dinner all the time,” Volmut says. He made his first wine when he was in high school, although Volmut says that it was far from a quality product.

Looking for a career change to take him towards retirement, Volmut moved to Washington in 2007. He started out taking wine classes at Yakima Valley Community College. That fall he worked in the Barnard Griffin tasting room, peppering winemaker Rob Griffin with questions. “He was very open and forthright with his knowledge for a young neophyte like myself,” Volmut says. Volmut subsequently interned during the 2008 harvest at Olsen Estates, assisting winemaker Kyle Johnson. The following year Volmut made his first commercial wine for Wind Rose Cellars.

In terms of naming the winery, Volmut says he and his wife wanted something that spoke to her background in wind energy. “I was looking at a wind rose that had all the different wind directions trying to find a new name,” Volmut says of the tool used by meteorologists to detect wind speed and direction. “Then it dawned on me how beautiful the wind rose itself is.”

From the start, Volmut wanted to focus strictly on Italian varieties with an emphasis on wines that go with food. “I am a huge foodie, almost became a chef,” Volmut says. ”I believe wine is the ultimate food and is often perceived that way.”

Columbia Crestis not only Washington’s top producer of high quality-to-price ratio wines, it is also an ideal wine country tourism destination.

The winery is located in Paterson, Washington in the Horse Heavens Hills. Columbia Crest has a grand estate building and sweeping grounds. It also has a gargantuan underground production facility that must be seen to be believed. Suffice to say, if the surface world were to come to an end, there would be enough space and fine wine to keep the population of a small city content here for decades.